Friday, 27 April 2012

The subject of today’s blog (ignore that if you’re reading this tomorrow) is fish. 'But why fish?' I hear you cry. First of all - stop crying. It's distracting me from writing this blog. Secondly (or thirdly if you're bad at maths), the subject of fish is something I do know a great deal about. My grandfather was a fish. Sorry, wait a minute, he was a greengrocer. I got a bit distracted there because of all the crying. But I do know a lot more about fish than you do. Unless you are a fish, and that's doubtful because fish can't read. Not as far as I'm aware anyway. They don't have libraries in the sea. Unless they're hidden. Or closed. And I've never heard of The Lost Library of Atlantis. Or if I have I’m not going to talk about it now.
But I know what you're thinking. You're thinking 'John - I don't want to read about fish, write about something else.' Well I’m afraid I call that sort of thinking 'fishist.' A lot of people saw the word ‘fish’ at the start of the blog and thought 'Brilliant! Just what I want to read about!' and I'm not going to let them down because of a few impertinent naysayers. So if I could just clarify - fish is the subject of the blog and that's final. Although I was originally thinking of writing about carpets.
What's wrong with being interested in carpets? I can’t believe this - first you don't like fish and now carpets come under fire! Well let me ask you one simple question - who's doing the writing, you or me? No, it's me.
And so onto our first and only subject - fish.* Well, fish are, of course, very strong creatures. I'd like to see you swimming around for hours on end without a break. Actually I wouldn’t because that would be extremely boring. But if you think the only thing that fish do is swim about, then you'd be very much mistaken. They also do lots of other interesting things. Just because I don’t know what they are doesn’t mean they don’t do them. Of course, very few fish can survive without water, and when I say ‘very few’ I mean ‘none.’ My friend Lionel told me he knew about a fish that survived without water for three and a half years but I don’t believe him. If you ever meet Lionel, please bear this in mind.
Of course there are literally loads of different types of fish, ranging from the Venezuelan Holdall Fish to the Venezuelan Different Fish, which is, as one would expert, completely different to the Venezuelan Holdall Fish. But not all fish come from Venezuela. Many come from Basildon and the surrounding areas.
Whales are not really fish, so if you're looking for information about whales here I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed. As are people hoping to find out about carpets.
And so there we must leave fish. Next time I’ll be looking at why it’s been so difficult for me to write about fish, and asking whether writing about carpets would have been a better idea.
*fish